Zach Lowe

But like Hartenstein in particular feels pretty essential to their team right now is offensive rebounding is passing the floater that feels automatic again.

Dort, you know, he's the biggest and stoutest of their just army of defensive players, like the best guy on LeBron that they have, although Caruso has looked pretty good on him.

And he's, as you mentioned, like a hometown beloved sort of homegrown favorite in Oklahoma City.

Also, there's 7-0 in the playoffs and just pantsing everybody left and right in all these games.

Like every one of the Lakers games is exactly the same.

It's close, and then it's a 25-point game.

You're like, what the fuck just happened?

And by the way, just as an aside,

I just – I hate this burgeoning thing that's happening where in a couple of playoff games, including game two when SGA was in foul trouble and they win the non-SGA minutes –

And again, played pretty well with SGA on the bench in a game three blowout.

And Isaiah Joe goes crazy.

AJ Mitchell has a star kind of game.

Chet looks great.

It becomes a referendum on like SGA's MVP case.

Like, well, the team was so good around him that why did we all get this wrong?

First of all, it's two games.

I think that's a pretty banal argument.

And the 82-game sample size, which is what actually applies here, of all these guys missed lots of games, including Jalen Williams, missed lots of games.

And the numbers, they just didn't have a good offense with SGA on the floor.

And they were a regular team with SGA off the floor and a crazy elite team with SGA on the floor.